Tag: leadership

  • The Association of Corporate Executive Coaches elevates the value of executive coaches in the sea of organizational relationships

    by Esther LaVielle

    The Association of Corporate Executive Coaches (ACEC) is an association for master-level executive coaches who focuses on the results of the business side of coaching and who offer a Certification as a Master Corporate Executive Coach (MCEC) through their sister organization MEECO Leadership Institute.

    The association supports best practices to expand one’s executive coaching business to reach the level of an ‘Enterprise-wide Business Partner™’ with their clients. It also provides the opportunity to make valuable high-level connections with organizational leaders and colleagues. “The vision is to have corporate executive coaches be transformation catalysis for the 21st century and beyond, creating organizations of the future,” says CB Bowman, CEO of the ACEC and the MEECO Leadership Institute (the sister association to ACEC). “The mission of both associations is to elevate corporate executive coaching into a recognized critical profession in any organization’s success.” Each applicant must fulfill a list of requirements prior to acceptance into either association.

    Each ACEC member receives the following benefits:

    • Access to a network of like-minded executive coaches who share experiences, data, and provide support for client challenges
    • Discount to the annual executive coach leadership conference presented by the MEECO Leadership Institute
    • Free webinars on business and executive coaching topics and trends
    • Opportunities to source and collaborate with high-level talent within the network
    • Marketing opportunities to sell products and services to colleagues and organizations
    • Incentive programs
    • Researched and curated content
    • Publication of articles for organizations and industry
    • Ability to use the MEECO Leadership Institute™ as a lead generator
    • Increase visibility through Google ranking
    • Ability to present as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to organizations
    • Ability to qualify for book endorsements
    • Conference speaking opportunities, etc.
    • Opportunity to be certified as a Master Corporate Executive Coach (MCEC) through the MEECO Leadership Institute.

    The benefits to membership in MEECO are similar but organization-focused, which includes the opportunity to select SME (Subject Matter Experts) to assist them through organizational challenges.

    Expansion and growth starts with data

    As the ACEC and MEECO continued to grow, they began looking for solutions to simplify the application process for new members, review and evaluate applications for the MCEC certification, attract conference sponsors, collect data to publish a book, and to ensure they were staying true to the membership base. They were also seeking a better way to collect and evaluate data for organizations who apply for a MEECO Leadership Designation™, a designation for organizations who present best-case behavior related to employee sciences™, corporate culture, and executive coaching.

    Through their membership with TechSoup, ACEC found QuestionPro to be the most viable solution to reach all four business objectives over the past year. Although it took time to learn all of the features and practical applications of the different types of data points collected, ACEC was able to significantly decrease the length of time applicants needed to complete applications. They can collect and organize critical data, and provide an easier way to compare and contrast candidate information to present designations for their sister organization (the MEECO Leadership Institute), as well as track the satisfaction level of its members. All of this is critical to their growth path.

    QuestionPro allows the ACEC and MEECO to focus on the customer experience

    After implementing QuestionPro’s solution,100% of the admissions team, the designation team, and the certification review team were delighted with the smoother process. They were able to review more applicants faster and more efficiently than before. Data collected via surveys through the MEECO Leadership Institute are discussed and shared throughout the network and are opening doors to new sponsorship opportunities. The data collected will also be the foundation for a new book on the topic of executive coaching.

    CB Bowman CEO ACEC “Our main objective for ACEC and MEECO is to be a part of the fabric of organizations and lead transformation and innovation. Without QuestionPro, we were unable to compare, contrast, organize and use data effectively. We’re pleased with the impact QuestionPro has made in our customer experience and look forward to continuing our partnership with them, as we are discovering even more ways to incorporate QuestionPro to streamline our business.”

    – CB Bowman, CEO of the ACEC and MEECO Leadership Institute.

    Original Article click here: https://www.questionpro.com/blog/questionpro-helps-acec-and-meeco-to-focus-on-customer-experience/

  • When the Weight of a Decision is Keeping You Up at Night…

    When the Weight of a Decision is Keeping You Up at Night…

    Most of us find it easy to make a decision when faced with a right versus a wrong option. We were educated to know the difference between right and wrong in most cases, and through experience our minds were shaped to know how to make such a decision.

    There is clearly a right way to do things because doing it any other way would be wrong. As leaders, we tend to experience these types of situations on a daily basis. And, for the most part, we do quite well in removing obstacles, selecting the best options, and getting things done. However, most of us were not equipped to deal with situations that actually present two equally right options.

    The challenge in these situations is deciding which right thing to do because choosing one means we cannot chose the other. When faced with a right-AND-right choice, we are more likely to avoid making a decision altogether. Relying on the simple rule of “do what feels right” school of personal ethics won’t resolve your dilemma. Moreover, not making any decision doesn’t mean that the situation goes away or vanishes completely. In fact, the opposite is true. It creates a bottleneck, with work piling up because mandates cannot be completed on time due to your indecision. And try as you may, you cannot avoid these situations. It sort of feels like an unwanted traveling companion moving with you wherever you go. The weight of that decision lies solely with you, and only you can decide. No one else.

    So what’s ‘the thing’ about situations that ask you to choose one good option over another good option? Fundamentally, they require you to consider all aspects of the situation in light of personal and organizational values concurrently since the decision you will ultimately need to make will not only shape your character, but also the fabric of your organization.Throughout your professional career, the weight of these situations is experienced slightly differently.

    During the early years, the right-AND-right scenarios tend to touch upon personal integrity. Choosing one option versus another one usually means you compromise something that is of value to you. The pull is between one set of responsibilities over another: “Do I say ‘yes’ and realize I cannot do that anymore? If I accept this, it means I need to give up that!” The qualitative nature of the pull is essentially about you.

    As you gain in scope of influence and accountability in your line of work, these situations of right-ANDright tend to take on a different, more complex flavor. Now, your decisions are not purely personal. The consequences of your decisions can send ripple effects throughout the organization. Everyone is watching you carefully, and noticing if what you said is what you will do. Your decisions can also impact whether others will follow your lead or not: “If I decide to act on this, how will others interpret our corporate rules? By making this decision, who in my group will be mostly impacted? By saying no to this, will others feel I wasn’t being fair?”

    These decisions do define your leadership future as people notice the incongruence in how you hold yourself and others accountable to what you said was important to you, to the team, and to the organization. Finally, and perhaps the most challenging of situations are those that impact networks of relationships outside of your organization. These relationships have legitimate claims, but you cannot satisfy them all. Obligations to one network may be in conflict with another, for instance. Complicating this decision-making process is the stake you claim personally.

    Your own personal values and views may be in direct opposition to any one stakeholder group and what they are responsible for. In his seminal book, entitled, “Defining Moments”, Joseph Badaracco (1997) takes a deep dive into these situations. Suffice to say that there is no exact science or fast-easy approach. Making decisions in right-AND-right situations calls for prudence and awareness of our own moral compass. It demands that we select one option knowing that it factors out all future opportunities and possibilities linked with the other option. Organizations, for their part, ought to encourage managers to value the decision-making process for its inherent complexity, and not just push for ANY decision to be made.

    Moreover, when a decision is well-researched (not just rationalized) and thoughtful, it should be seen as ONE good decision even if it leads to an outcome that was not wanted. Otherwise, you risk creating organizational cultures where decisions are only made in right-versus-wrong situations, and those that present leaders with right-AND-right options are avoid ed altogether.*** Not too long ago, I shared the following three rules with a young aspiring student who was faced with aright-AND-right scenario. My intention was to help her notice that she was indeed facing a situation that she had never encountered before, and that the choice she made today meant eliminating some future directions.

    Embedded in my strategy was to have her ease into this part of young adulthood and not fear such situations as she is bound to experience more in her adult life.Three Rules to a Happy Life:

    1. Never be too proud to change your mind. The sign of a strong leader is one who changes her decision as new information emerges.

    2. Never go for easy. You have one life. Make it matter.

    3. Even after you have carefully considered your options and how each one factors in and factors out possible pathways, flip a coin and name the two sides. If the toss lands on one side that represents the option you chose, and you feel the need to flip again, you have your answer.

    Final words:I’ve encountered countless leaders faced with right-AND-right situations who in the moment, needed an impartial person to help them through the decision: Someone completely separate from their company and usual circle of trusted advisors who although held in high esteem, still tended to have some sort of bias. They have acknowledged that a simple phone call to a professional coach, outside of their structured leadership and mentorship programs, was the game-changing difference. This my friends, was the AHA! moment I had in founding Grand Heron International – for on-demand coaching, for anyone, anywhere, facing a situation where they feel stuck and unable to move forward. I’ve been there, I’ve seen others there and chances are, you’ve been there in your professional life too.

    Remember: Stagnating in indecision is never an option. There are ways to help you see beyond the horizon.

    By Mirella De Civita Ph.D., PCC, MCEC President & Founder of Grand Heron International https://grandheroninternational.ca/

     

  • Welcome Emails… Remembering to Say Thank You

    Why Welcome Emails are Important – Statistics and Trends

    Infographic by- Invesp Landing page Design and Optimization

  • Three Transitions Even the Best Leaders Struggle With

    Three Transitions Even the Best Leaders Struggle With

    by Cassandra Frangos

    View original publication on HBR.org

    We love to read about the dynamics of success. We study it, celebrate it, and try to emulate how successful leaders rise to the top. I’m no different: I’ve spent my career helping executives succeed, either through coaching and development or assessments of their strengths and opportunity areas to identify the development work they need to do to take their careers to the next level. But even as I’m drawn to success stories, I have found that the greatest lessons come from examining failure.

    For instance, my last research effort looked into how elite executives make a successful transition to the C-suite. As I worked through the interviews, I found that executives whose careers had been derailed shared many commonalities. Specifically, I found that C-suite executives are vulnerable to career failure when they are in the midst of one of three common transition scenarios.

    1.The leap into leadership. The transition to the top team is demanding, with 50% to 60% of executives failing within the first 18 months of being promoted or hired. For instance, Gil Amelio was Apple’s CEO for less than a year in 1997, and General Motors’ chief human resources officer decamped in 2018 after just eight months in the job.

    For some, this high-profile leadership transition is more than they bargain for. They are unprepared for the frantic pace or they lack the requisite big-picture perspective. (Sixty-one percent of executives can’t meet the strategic challenges they face in senior leadership.) This is an especially common risk for leapfrog leaders — executives one or two steps down in the organization who skip levels when they are elevated a top spot. But even the most seasoned executives have little transparency into looming team dysfunction or insurmountable challenges until they are actually in the role.

    One veteran executive I know accepted a job reporting to the CEO only to find that her functional area had been mismanaged and was in serious financial disarray. She started to turn around its performance in year one, but her reporting structure was altered mid-stream, and she found herself accountable to the CFO. The new situation left her feeling “micromanaged,” and she moved on two years later.

    The single best thing a new executive can do to avoid a brief tenure is to actively pursue feedback. Most undergo rigorous executive assessments prior to receiving an offer, but soon they are too occupied with the demands of the job to be introspective. Many benefit from in-depth 360-degree reviews at six to eight months and then again at 18 months. One division president I interviewed learned in her 360s that board members were skeptical of her abilities. To her credit, she did the difficult work of getting to know the board members better and put together a plan to actively win them over.

    Overall, knowing the areas others think you need to grow allows you to get the support you need — executive coaching, finding a peer-mentor, or adjusting your team to round out your development areas. It also helps you assess whether you are fitting onto the culture or if you need to strengthen key relationships internally and externally.

    2. The organizational transition. I would argue that nearly every organization today is either considering or enacting a transformation of some type. Even in this “change is the new normal” reality, high stakes transformations are highly risky for executives who fail to reinvent the organization or themselves fast enough.

    Mergers, for instance, create instant overlap in executive roles, and redundant leaders can be swept out in waves. Just as often, leaders fail to read the tea leaves before a surprise executive succession and are left vulnerable when their allies exit. But by far the biggest derailer for executives during this transition is misinterpreting the need for change or getting on the wrong side of it. For example, Durk Jager stepped down as CEO of Proctor & Gamble in 2000, just a year and a half into the job, after roiling P&G’s conservative culture by taking on “too much change too fast.” More often, leaders are too slow to act or unwilling to get on board as a change effort gets underway. In 2009, for instance, GM removed its CEO, Fritz Henderson, because he was not enough of a change agent.

    To survive organizational and industry shifts, leaders need to get ahead of change. They need to think about where they fit into the new order and find a way to have an impact. They also must overcommunicate with the CEO or board to make it clear where they stand on the need for change and how they will lead its implementation.

    3.The pinnacle paradox. The last tricky transition that derails executives is the career pinnacle. C-suite leaders are at the apex of their careers. They have competed for years and achieved what they have been striving for: a spot on the top team. As a result, many experience a type of paradox: They are working harder than ever to succeed, but they don’t know what’s next in their career. In time, this uncertainty, combined with job stress, can lead to burnout. Executives I have coached sometimes hit the ceiling and feel “stuck” at the top. Whether they experience burnout or move on for another reason, the average tenure of C-suite leaders has been declining in recent years. According to one study, the median tenure for CEOs at large-cap companies is five years. The tenure for CMOs is even less: 42 months, according to Spencer Stuart.

    Executives can take steps to either extend their tenure or prepare for what’s next in their career. As part of that, they need to rethink their relationship with sponsors. At this stage in their career lifecycle they may not need sponsors to create new opportunities for them, but they do need advocates, supportive peers, and career role models. C-suite executives can move on to lead in other organizations or they may eventually retire and do board work. Others may find like-minded partners and investors to launch their own venture. I’ve worked with younger executives, as well, who accept global assignments or move down in the organization to gain new experience — they move down with a plan to move up again later in a different functional role. Regardless of their future plan, C-suite executives who surround themselves with support and have a clear vision of their future, are more likely continue to succeed.

    The capacity for reinvention is the single-most-important career attribute for executives today. Successful reinvention may look different for each of us, but if we do not attempt it, we are sure to fail.

  • How You Need to Balance Belonging with Standing Out

    How You Need to Balance Belonging with Standing Out

    by Liz Guthridge, MCEC | Jul 7, 2018 | Blog | 0 comments

    Superstars, rock stars, and heroes who save the day have fallen out of favor in many organizations.

    Now we’re encouraged to celebrate team players who cooperate, collaborate, and play well with others.

    They combine their brainpower to deal with the complexity surrounding us. (Yes, it’s a VUCA–volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous—world.) More brains are better than one as it’s impossible for one person to know all the answers, or even pose all the key questions.

    Yet, we still need to pay attention to and honor individuals and their personal contributions.

    Any time we ignore an individual’s “superpowers” or even a person’s unique characteristics, we turn a blind eye to our humanity. As a result, we’re doing a disservice to individual team members and the team as a whole that can hurt individual as well as team performance.

    Here’s why individual recognition is so important. We humans have two competing social needs—the need to belong and the need to stand out from the crowd. Or in a work setting, stand out on the team.

    Scientists have a name for this dynamic duality: optimal distinctiveness.

    Becoming aware of this 27-year-old concept is the first step to improving individual performance and creating more inclusive, better performing teams.

    The second step is finding the optimal balance between homogeneity and uniqueness. This is challenging, not only for an individual, but also for team leaders and especially organizational leaders.

    The upside of belonging gives you as a team member purpose, meaning and clarity. Let’s say you’re proud to be a member of a special project team that’s tackling a vital organizational issue, such as expanding services to new customers, including animal owners.

    On the downside, you don’t want your group membership to crush your personality or silence your distinct voice, especially when you have a strong point of view. For instance, what if you don’t have much passion or compassion for one of the new customer niches, such as exotic animal owners?

    For some individuals, getting and staying in equilibrium with certain groups can be a continual challenge.

    As a leader, you may need to make an effort to achieve optimal distinctiveness for your teams or organization unless the duality is baked into your organizational DNA.

    For instance, consider Airbnb and Planned Parenthood. Both are built around group belonging and individual uniqueness. Airbnb hosts offer up their personal homes to guests. In Planned Parenthood’s case, stand-alone affiliates around the United States provide reproductive health care and other related services to local patients. These affiliates represent the Planned Parenthood brand as they adjust their delivery to fit their local community.

    For leaders in other types of organizations, here are three suggestions for working toward applying optimal distinctiveness:

    Embrace inclusion, recognizing that it affects everyone. As the neuroscientists say, if you aren’t actively including people, you’re accidentally excluding them. The human brain interprets ambiguity as a potential threat, which can make people feel they don’t belong and you as a leader may not care about them. From a practical perspective,

    as a leader you can make people feel included by being clear in your words and actions that they are members of the group and play an important role.

    Remind them of the group’s purpose.

    Keep them regularly informed.

    Help them and others find common ground as they work.

    Encourage them to speak up, reinforcing that it’s a safe place. (For more about the importance of psychological safety and inclusion, check out Why you need safety for a high-performing culture.)

    Get to know team members as individuals and treat them according to the platinum rule. This means treating people the way they want to be treated.

    For example, if they prefer private recognition over public recognition, write them a handwritten, personal note to thank them for their contribution instead of asking them to stand up to be applauded at a public meeting.

    In other situations, be curious about their interests outside of work, such as entertainment preferences, hobbies and family, and ask about them.

    And support them in bringing their whole self to work and expressing their individuality.

    Champion volunteer issues groups, rather than employee resource groups. As background, the traditional employee resource groups, such as women’s groups, African-American Groups, and LGBTQ groups, heighten the differences among individuals in the workforce. This can lead to two detrimental effects. Those who don’t fit the group membership criteria feel excluded. (This has contributed to many white males feeling they’re being left behind in diversity initiatives.) Also, research has shown that identity groups can act as an echo chamber for individuals, perpetuating self-stereotypes, such as women feeling they lack confidence.

    By contrast, volunteer issue groups, such as teams working to protect the environment, further education, or address customer concerns, give interested individuals an opportunity to contribute their unique gifts for a good cause and work with others who share their interests.

    Yes, there’s pressure between belonging and maintaining individual identity. However, it’s a healthy tension that contributes to our humanness. And if individuals and leaders make an effort to strike a balance both as individuals and teams, they can achieve amazing things together.

    How do you balance belonging with standing out?

    Resource: https://connectconsultinggroup.com/how-you-need-to-balance-belonging-with-standing-out/

  • 4 Signs an Executive Isn’t Ready for Coaching

    The stigma of asking for or being assigned an executive coach is vanishing quickly. The growth of the industry tells us so. In the U.S. alone, $1 billion was spent on business, personal and relationship coaches last year, according to IbisWorld, up about 20% from five years earlier. And the number of business coaches worldwide has zoomed more than 60% since 2007, according to one coaching association. But while executive coaches have improved the performance of many already-good managers and sanded the rough edges off many less effective ones, they aren’t a miracle cure. In fact, we have seen many companies waste considerable sums by assigning coaches to managers who just aren’t ready to be coached, no matter how effective the coaches may be.

    So how do those who control the coaching purse strings — HR, talent managers, and other buyers — avoid throwing money away on uncoachable executives? Considering that a year’s engagement with a top executive coach can cost more than $100,000, it’s an important question.

    From nearly 35 years of coaching hundreds of executives, our firm has noticed a pattern of red flags that indicate when a coaching investment will be wasted. Here are four things to watch out for:

    1. They blame external factors for their problems.

    When things go wrong, does this person always have an excuse? Maybe they point a finger at the quality of their team, a lack of resources, or even their boss.

    When leaders argue about the validity of your reasons for offering coaching, or offer excuses or defenses for poor results, it can be a sign that they lack self-awareness. Before any coaching can be effective, they need to wake up to the ways their actions affect others.

    One CEO we worked with was known for his smart turnarounds of a large media company. But he was struggling to get along with his executive team. Finally, several board directors suggested he should seek out a coach. After multiple sessions, he had shared little information about himself, and we were no closer to figuring out the root of the problem. Stymied, we suggested that we observe the next executive team meeting.

    Suddenly, all was clear. We were shocked by how he controlled the conversation in the room. He simply spoke over other people with a volume of words that was unfathomable. When he left the room to take a call, his team members erupted with frustration. It was obvious that this CEO was completely out of touch — something that became even more apparent later on, when he asked us to tell the board how positively he was responding to coaching.

    Leaders like this often ignore criticism if it doesn’t jibe with their view of themselves — and such feedback is easy to ignore if it’s buried in a performance review or mentioned briefly in a larger conversation. Conducting a non-judgmental, just-the-facts 360-degree review could help them see the reality of their situation. Until they can see what others see and why it matters, they won’t examine their behavior, and coaching will be useless.

    2. You can’t get on their calendar.

    Some leaders claim to be receptive to coaching but just can’t find the time. They may cancel sessions at the last minute, constantly reschedule, or, when they do show up, be visibly distracted. They lack space for coaching both in their calendar, and in their mind.

    Unlike the oblivious leader, the too-busy leader is often quite likable. They will apologize for being hard to pin down, and be very direct about how busy they are. Don’t be surprised if they’re flattered to be offered coaching. But coaching can’t be crammed into the schedule of a leader who wears their busy-ness as a badge of honor. Their inability to prioritize is a sign they need coaching, but their unwillingness to make room for it suggests they won’t be a good coaching investment.

    A brilliant engineer we know had been promoted three times in four years, and by the time he was nearly 30 he was a group president at a U.S. manufacturing company. Diligent, humble, and smart, he could hold a room spellbound with only a marker and a whiteboard as he worked out solutions to highly technical problems. However, as adept as he was at the technical aspects of his job, he now had 20 people reporting to him whom he had no idea how to manage.

    After three months of coaching, his superiors could see it was going nowhere. The executive often rescheduled his sessions, telling his coach he didn’t have the time. He believed he couldn’t set aside the time to improve himself. That made him uncoachable.

    HR managers should do some reality testing to ensure the too-busy leader is willing to make room for coaching. To benefit from coaching, too-busy leaders must make the space to be fully present, both during the coaching sessions and after, doing the difficult work of developing new mindsets, skills, and habits. Ask this person what tasks or responsibilities they’d be willing to give up or delegate, even temporarily, to make time for coaching. If they struggle to think of any, give them a gentle but firm ultimatum as part of a career planning conversation: that they have plateaued at the company and won’t go to the next level until they make time for self-development.

    3. They focus too much on tips and tactics.

    Some leaders eagerly agree to coaching, but then avoid the deeper inquiries required for meaningful transformation. They’re willing to modify behaviors, but not beliefs. They view coaching as medicine that, if taken regularly, will help them get ahead.

    The quick-fix leader becomes frustrated when their coach asks questions that require self-reflection. They want answers, not questions. “You’re the expert, you tell me,” they’ll say in response to questions from the coach, or “What if I did this?” Everything comes back to tactics. (A related warning sign is if a leader asks how quickly the coaching can be finished — especially if they demand that the cycle be compressed.)

    Although coaches sometimes offer suggestions, their real job is to help executives uncover the assumptions driving their behavior. Only then can a coach help them challenge self-limiting beliefs that block their development. However, the quick-fix leader has little interest in this process.

    One CEO we worked with was leading a family business that had recently been sold to a large company. He was told by a leader in the new parent company (who himself had benefitted from coaching) that coaching would help him make the transition. The CEO gladly accepted, wanting to be seen as a peer.

    However, it wasn’t long into the first coaching session that he showed his entire focus was on “doing whatever other successful people did.” The coach worked tirelessly to shift the conversation to the CEO’s purpose and goals. Each time, however, he shifted the discussion back to the “secrets of success” of other organizational leaders he wanted to emulate. Ultimately, he was passed over for a permanent role on the parent company’s leadership team, and left the organization.

    To prompt this kind of leader to be open to self-reflection, remind them of all the other times they vowed to change but were unsuccessful. They then might realize they need to work on more than just changing their game plan. Or, introduce them into a preliminary mentoring conversation with one of the leaders they admire. Tell the mentor to share their experience of struggling to develop.

    4. They delay getting started with a coach to “do more research” or “find the right person.”

    To be sure, it’s important to have a good fit between a leader and his coach. But a continual rejection of qualified coaches should give you pause. A related red flag is if the person is acting confused, and asking repeatedly why coaching has been suggested. Assuming you’ve clearly explained why coaching is necessary, this could be a defense mechanism and a signal that the person is not ready to confront their shortcomings. It usually stems from insecurity.

    Being coached can be daunting, and not everyone is ready to take it on. We remember a physician leader who was hired to turn around a business unit of a large medical center. When his staff challenged him, he became emotional. Told by his boss that he needed a coach to help him control his emotions, he was hurt and angrily asked “Why?” — failing again to control his emotions. He was too full of hidden fears for the coaching to be useful. His boss eventually reassigned him, and ultimately he left the organization.

    Reframe coaching as an investment the organization is making in their development rather than a personal fix. Tell them your firm provides this resource for high-potential, top performers to accelerate their success. If this leader can view coaching as something positive to help them achieve their goals, they may warm up to the process.

    When Going Coach-Less Is Not Viable

    After hearing us say that a certain leader is not a good candidate for coaching, an executive who brought us in will often say a variant of this: “Well, he must be coached. We can’t let him continue to manage others the way he has, but we can’t fire him easily either because we need his skills badly.” But imposing coaching on someone who just can’t handle it at the moment isn’t going to help anyone. Companies are better off directing their people development investments elsewhere — skills training or academic programs are often better options.

    Invest your coaching budget in people who have shown the willingness and the capacity to change, and you’ll get a much better return on your investment.

    Source: https://hbr.org/2018/07/4-signs-an-executive-isnt-ready-for-coaching

    By:

    July 09, 2018

  • Leading with Grit and Grace

    Leading with Grit and Grace from CB Bowman, CEO Master Corporate Executive Coach

  • Leading with the Power of Humility

    by Dan Rockwel

    View original publication on LeadershipFreak

    The seductions of arrogance wreck leaders, demoralize teams, and destroy organizations.

    “The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.” (Attributed to Albert Einstein.)

    Everything good in leadership begins with humility.

    Subtleties of arrogance:

    1. Taking offense at slights. A thin skin points to pride. “You deserve better.”
    2. Judging others by unspoken expectations. The “humble-arrogant” are better than others because they hold people to high standards that they don’t meet themselves.
    3. Searching for self-justification. Arrogance circles back on problems – not to find solutions – but in search of reasons it didn’t do wrong.

    The brother of arrogance is disdain.

    All you can do is coerce those you look down on.

    Practice humility:

    Humility is a practice not a destination.

    #1. Acknowledge the subtlety of arrogance.

    Humility begins when you acknowledge arrogance.

    You have puddles of humility and oceans of arrogance, but you judge yourself by the puddles. My own arrogance makes me skeptical of any other option.

    #2. Pursue growth.

    “An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life – becoming a better person.” Leo Tolstoy

    Everyone who develops their leadership knows what they’re working on.

    What leadership behavior will you practice today?

    Practice is intentional repetition that includes reflection and course adjustment.

    #3. Pick up the trash.

    Don’t simply tell people to pick up the trash. Pick it up yourself.

    No job is menial to the humble.

    Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, was famous for picking up trash. “Every night you’d see him coming down the street, walking close to the gutter, picking up every McDonald’s wrapper and cup along the way,” former McDonald’s CEO Fred Turner told author Alan Deutschman. “He’d come into the store with both hands full of cups and wrappers.” (Daniel Coyle in the Culture Code)

    What are the subtitles of arrogance?

    How might leaders practice humility?

  • Putting an End to Leaders Self-Serving Behavior

    by Morela Hernandez

    View original publication on MITSloan

    Although we might hope that leaders in business environments will embrace their decision-making responsibilities with a clear head and an open heart, empirical research has shown otherwise. Instead, business leaders are often selfish. Access to resources in many organizations is a moving target, leaving many managers feeling protective of what’s theirs. And when they take more than their fair share — extra resources for themselves at the expense of others — they often do it because they honestly think they are entitled to these resources and believe they have earned the right to take more.

    Where does this kind of entitlement come from?

    As I’ve tried to reconcile current political events — such as the European Union’s reaction to Brexit, the continuing global refugee crisis, and the ongoing debates in the United States about tax and health care reform — with scholarly work on ambiguity and decision-making, I’ve come to think that feeling entitled to a larger share of a resource might come not from objective assessments of reality but rather from what social scientists call motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning occurs when people “selectively notice, encode, and retain information that is consistent with their desires.” People use this kind of reasoning to reach conclusions that help them support their self-serving beliefs. After all, reasoning, it has been said, “was designed by evolution to help us win arguments.”

    Understanding the effects of self-serving beliefs is a tricky business. In the last decade of research in behavioral ethics, for instance, scholars have moved away from a “bad apples” approach in which only people with poor moral characteristics are deemed likely to behave unethically. Instead, researchers have examined how people can engage in self-serving behaviors while convinced of the rightness and fairness of doing so. Few studies, however, have explored the circumstances in which this type of selfishness — one that comes with a sense of entitlement and justification — is likely to arise.

    Working alongside my colleague Laura Noval of the Imperial College Business School in London, we sought to understand how organizations enable self-serving behavior. Specifically, we investigated how certain contextual and individual characteristics can facilitate motivated reasoning aimed at justifying self-serving decisions.

    We explored this issue through two experimental studies, one using a hypothetical business decision-making scenario (in which 395 people participated, 52% women) and the other using a behavioral task in the laboratory (in which 239 people participated, 52% women). In both studies, we assigned participants to conditions in which they received either identical performance information with respect to another party (strong, unambiguous context), or in which they and the other party were favored by different performance criteria (weak, ambiguous context). In the latter case, participants could use motivated reasoning to convince themselves that their own performance criterion was more relevant for the task at hand, thereby convincing themselves that they deserved larger shares of the resource.

  • A Survey of How 1,000 CEOs Spend Their Day Reveals What Makes Leaders Successful

    By Oriana Bandiera, Stephen Hansen, Andrea Prat, Raffaella Sadun

    View original Publication on hbr.org

    What makes a CEO effective? The question has been studied extensively, of course, including in HBR. Yet we still know fairly little about how CEOs behave day-to-day and how their behavior relates to the success or failure of the companies they run. Previous studies have typically had limitations. Some have been of small samples, or relied heavily on the researchers’ interpretation to classify different “types” of executive.

    In new research, we use survey data from over 1,000 CEOs across six countries and the financial performance of their companies to explore these questions. And our evidence suggests that hands-on managerial CEOs are, on average, less effective than leaders who stay more high-level.

    Our data set includes every activity a CEO undertakes in a week, as well as whether it was planned ahead of time and who else was involved. We used machine learning to determine which differences in CEO behavior are most important. In effect, we asked the algorithm: If you had to explain CEO behavior by dividing them into two types, how would you do it?

    Although the algorithm is completely agnostic, the classification it generates closely resembles John Kotter’s distinction between “managers” and “leaders.” The first type of behavior — managers — includes relatively more plant visits, interactions with employees in supply chain management, and meetings with clients and suppliers. The other type — leaders — includes relatively more interactions with C-suite executives, personal and virtual communications and planning, and meetings with a wide variety of internal functions and external stakeholders. Our data doesn’t insist on classifying CEOs strictly as one type. Instead, we use an index that classifies each CEO as a mix of the two types.
    What Do CEOs Do All Day?

    On average, about one-quarter of CEOs’ days are spent alone, including sending emails. Another 10% is spent on personal matters, and 8% is spent traveling. The remainder (56%) is spent with at least one other person, which mostly involves meetings, most of which are planned ahead of time. About one-third of the time CEOs spend with others is one-on-one; two-thirds is with more than one other person. (This data includes a CEO’s entire workday, not just time in the office.)

    The most common departments for CEOs to meet with are production (35% of time spent with others), marketing (22%), and finance (17%). The most common meetings with outside functions are clients (10%) and suppliers (7%).

    But CEOs vary considerably on each of these, and our model divides CEO behavior into the two groups mentioned above — leaders and managers — and then scores each CEO as being degrees of each.
    Which CEO Type Is Better for Companies?

    When we analyzed CEO type and companies’ financial performance, accounting for other variables including industry, country, and firm size, we found that CEOs who tilt more toward “leader” than “manager” run more-productive and more-profitable companies. And, to our surprise, these previously ignored behavioral differences across CEOs have quite a large association with firm productivity, about one-fifth as big as the impact of a firm’s capital inputs (machinery, equipment, buildings, and so on). Do leader CEOs just happen to work at better companies? We looked at before and after data for firms where a new CEO was appointed, and we found that the appointment of a leader CEO was followed by higher productivity. The effect showed up three years later, which suggests that leaders are doing the hard work of changing companies.
    Is One CEO Type Always Better?

    So far, you might conclude that the best CEOs don’t get too bogged down in the details of day-to-day management, and instead focus on higher-level leadership tasks, such as convening the heads of the different functions and communicating strategy and vision.

    But the picture painted by the data is actually different from this one-size-fits-all approach. Leaders tend to be more prevalent in larger firms and in industries that are, on average, more skill-intensive and complex, while managers tend to run smaller and, to some extent, simpler organizations (i.e., industries characterized by a greater intensity of routine tasks). And plenty of manager CEOs in our data set do run successful firms.

    These observations led us to hypothesize that the performance differentials we captured in the data might instead be due to imperfections in the CEO-firm fit. Some companies need great in-the-weeds managers as CEOs, and others need high-level, vision-setting communicators. But, because the market for CEOs is far from perfect, sometimes managers — who are more abundant in our sample than leaders — end up in a leader role, and thus negatively affect the performance of the firm they run.

    In support of this hypothesis, we saw that places with less-effective labor markets for CEOs were typically associated with a greater disparity in the performance of firms run by managers, relative to firms run by leaders. Although we can’t say exactly what might drive these allocation frictions, empirically they are important and suggest that the fit between company and CEOs’ behavioral traits really matters for firm performance.

    Leaders who set the vision, convene key functions, and communicate effectively can, overall, have a meaningful impact on firm performance, when the setting requires these skills. But just as important is understanding and finding the right fit between the CEO’s leadership style and what the company actually needs.